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Earlier this spring, we told you about an exciting new study showing the benefits of social-emotional learning programs like Yoga Calm on academic achievement. The very day we posted it, we got an email from Wendy Holley-Boen, a school psychologist here in Oregon who began using Yoga Calm with students late last year and wanted to update us on outcomes.
One of the schools is in LaPine, and we had a kindergarten class come in with very few school-readiness skills and lots of inappropriate behavior. They had taken their DIBELS [Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills] test early in the fall, and across the board they knew zero letters, zero sounds. Since November, the class teacher and I have co-taught Yoga Calm once a week: I do lessons for half an hour each Tuesday, and she incorporates what I’ve taught all day, every day for the rest of the week.
We just finished DIBELS for the winter term, and this kindergarten had THE MOST GROWTH in the entire Bend-LaPine School District!!! We attribute their increased focus, sense of community and growth to our weekly groups.
So…now people are starting to take us seriously
As well they should!
Congratulations to you, Wendy, and to the class teacher for such an outstanding accomplishment! Here’s hoping that more teachers and staff in your district begin to use Yoga Calm to give these kids such a wonderful academic start.
Have a Yoga Calm success story you’d like to share? Leave it in the comments – or email us at info@yogacalm.org.
Image by woodleywonderworks, via Flickr
Since we started Yoga Calm more than ten years ago, an impressive body of research has been published on the positive impact of yoga and social-emotional learning on academic performance. It supports what we’ve seen in practice and what we’ve heard from hundreds of educators, counselors, parents and others. “My students are staying on task much more consistently,” says a teacher. “I’m getting fewer reports of classroom disruptions; disciplinary referrals are way down,” says a principal. A parent says, “My child’s grades have really gone up!”
But administrators tend to want more than anecdotes when teachers and staff recommend bringing Yoga Calm into their schools. They need more than observations that emotionally intelligent children do better in school. They want data that demonstrate efficacy – especially of programs that are both cost-effective and support meeting academic mandates.
So we were excited to read a new study in Child Development on “The Impact of Enhancing Students’ Social and Emotional Learning” (PDF). It’s a comprehensive meta-analysis of 213 studies – nearly 90% of which haven’t been reviewed before – that involved over a quarter of a million students in the general populations of schools ranging from elementary through high school.
Its main finding: Students in social-emotional learning programs “demonstrated significantly improved social and emotional skills, attitudes, behavior, and academic performance that reflected an 11-percentile-point gain in achievement.”
In analyzing the data, the authors took six outcome areas into account: social and emotional skills, attitudes toward self and others, positive social behaviors, conduct problems, emotional distress and academic performance. While improvements were seen in at least some areas no matter the type or means of intervention, the greatest improvements were seen among a specific type of program:
- Classroom-based
- Teacher-led
- SAFE (sequenced, active, focused and explicit)
Only interventions meeting those three criteria showed significant improvement in all six areas measured. Moreover, only those programs led by school staff – teachers or otherwise – demonstrated significant improvement in academic achievement.
As it’s practiced in schools around the country, Yoga Calm fulfills all three criteria. And because its activities and processes can be easily implemented in classrooms and adapted to academic curricula, it can be fully integrated into the school day – not something extra tagged onto or shoved in as a standalone program but an integral part of total learning. More, its relaxation activities give students the opportunity to more thoroughly integrate what they’ve learned, while its physical activities and social-emotional components work as complements, enhancing and reinforcing each other.
The heart of the study – and what decision-makers in education need to know – is this:
Current findings document that SEL programs yielded significant positive effects on targeted social-emotional competencies and attitudes about self, others, and school. They also enhanced students’ behavioral adjustment in the form of increased prosocial behaviors and reduced conduct and internalizing problems, and improved academic performance on achievement tests and grades. While gains in these areas were reduced in magnitude during follow-up assessments and only a small percentage of studies collected follow-up information, effects nevertheless remained statistically significant for a minimum of 6 months after the intervention. Collectively, these results build on positive results reported by other research teams that have conducted related reviews examining the promotion of youth development or the prevention of negative behaviors (Catalano et al., 2002; Greenberg et al., 2001; Hahn et al., 2007; Wilson & Lipsey, 2007; Wilson et al., 2001).
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Educators who are pressured by the No Child Left Behind legislation to improve the academic performance of their students might welcome programs that could boost achievement by 11 percentile points.
Last month, we looked at how the distraction brought on by electronic media and multitasking can cause problems for kids – things like lower grades, mood swings and more behavioral issues. But it’s not just about mental distraction. There’s a physical aspect, as well. For kids who are glued to a screen are kids who are not being physically active. The glut of electronic media and gadgets encourages sedentary behavior. In fact, the more screen time a child has, the more likely it is that he or she will become obese. Some estimates suggest that the incidence of obesity rises 6% for every hour a child spends in front of a screen.
Of course, screen time isn’t the only factor in determining obesity, but considering how childhood obesity rates have skyrocketed through the period in which computers and gadgetry have become ubiquitous, we may assume that, in addition to dietary changes, it’s a major factor. According to NHANES data reported on the CDC website, from 1976 to 1980, the obesity rate for children was between 5 and 6.5%. Today, the rates are over 12% for the youngest cohort (ages 2 through 5) and over 17% for remaining groups up to the age of 19, and even higher for Latinos and African-Americans. Type 2 diabetes, once so rarely seen in children that it was called “adult onset diabetes,” is being diagnosed at ever increasing rates in children, and it’s now predicted that today’s younger generations will be the first to not live as long as their parents.
Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama rolled out the program she’s spearheading to try to get our nation’s kids fit and healthy once again: Let’s Move!
Meeza 1/Flickr
Let’s Move aims “to solve the epidemic of childhood obesity within a generation” by encouraging physical activity; improving access to healthy, affordable food, including in the schools; and supporting parents in making healthy family choices. It will be interesting to see the results of this program, not just its effect on obesity rates and physical fitness, but also how it may impact kids’ academic achievement.
For it’s well-known that exercise, movement and play boost brain power and mood, and also support the development of positive social and emotional skills. Amongst some of the more telling findings, which we discuss in our book Yoga Calm for Children:
- Many studies have shown that the greatest yield of nerve growth factors happens when the body engages in complex movement patterns (Ratey, 2003).
- Movement and play develop the sensory-motor intelligence that supports intellectual, social, and personal development (Ayres, 2005).
- Higher levels of fitness are associated with higher academic achievement (California DOE, 2002).
- Exercise is really for the brain…It affects mood, vitality, alertness, and feelings of well-being (Ratey, 2001).
More of the strong ties between physical activity, good nutrition and academic preparedness and achievement are spelled out in this excellent handout (PDF) from the Minneapolis Public Schools on “The Relationship Between Student Health and Learning.”
What’s more, there’s some evidence that obesity itself may be a drag on academic achievement. For instance, a recent study by Jimmy Byrd, “The Impact of Physical Activity and Obesity on Academic Achievement,” showed that
students that maintained a higher level of physical activity maintained higher grades and learned at a faster rate than those students who were less physically active. Conversely, a negative relationship was observed between obesity, as rated by the BMI, and academic achievement. In other words, obese students performed below their more physically fit counterparts regarding academic achievement.
Of course, the question still remains: in the school environment in particular, where testing mandates and budget cuts have led to the slashing of physical education courses and extracurricular sports programs, how can one create opportunities for kids to get the exercise they need – the minimum 30 minutes a day (though some experts like John Ratey suggest that 2 hours is ideal and 1 hour, the minimum for maximum benefit to the brain)?
This real-world need is one of the reasons we designed Yoga Calm as we did – to make it adaptable to the needs and realities of present day conditions and expectations in our nation’s schools. The physical activities can be done in the classroom without special equipment or extra space, and are easily integrated with academic class plans. We offer sample ideas for doing this on the activity sheets in our book, and our workshop participants are encouraged to devise and share their own methods for integrating Yoga Calm with academic lessons.
By integrating physical, mental/emotional and cognitive properties within each activity, Yoga Calm becomes a positive and comprehensive way to support children’s health and wellness, body and brain and mind.
